Coaching is a Business
Hannah McNamara from the Masters Club talks about the live event Get More Clients Make More Money.
About Hannah McNamara: Hannah McNamara runs a mentoring programme for coaches, consultants, speakers and authors called the Masters Club (see http://www.marketinghelpforcoaches.com). For more resources to help you build your client base check out the ‘Find Your Niche and Get More Clients‘ home study course and Hannah’s popular coaching book ‘Niche Marketing for Coaches‘. Hannah’s tips are useful for life coaches, business coaches, executive coaches, consultants, speakers and authors who want to get more clients.
Hi Hannah
Like yourself, as you know, I come from a sales and marketing background. Yet I now find myself with mixed feelings about consistent marketing. Here’s why: Traditional “advertising” methods (e.g TV, Press, Radio) seem to me to be far less intrusive, than some of the marketing methods we use today, particularly email. I find myself “falling for” some of the best marketing messages and signing up for this and signing up for that. I then review and find I am getting too many emails so unsubscribe. Not only that, sometimes I assess some of the suppliers of these marketing messages as “overly persistent” or worse still “pests”, even if what they say is wise and useful. Sometimes the postive is drowned by the less than positive. I have a a form of love/hate relationship with the smartest and most persistent marketers: They are sources of inspiration and sources of irritation. (Present company excluded of course)
In reflecting there has to be a balance between consistent marketing that warms our client base to us and over doing it that can alienate our audience.
I’m also reminded about one of the most successful transformational seminar programmes in its day: Landmark Forum. Landmark had/have a extraordinarily persistent sales strategy which alienated many but enrolled many more.
Perhaps like life, love and irritation/anger, often go together. Then there is also another well known saying… “You can’t please all of the people all of the time”.
Of course if we are in business, we need to engage in some kinds of sales and marketing activities. The question then is how can we be visible, and useful without our audience feeling “conned” or similar.
Karen x